Light on Snow [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Anita Shreve (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2004

'I watched my father run forward in his snowshoes the way one sometimes does in dreams, unable to make the legs move fast enough. I ran to the place where he knelt. I looked down into the sleeping bag. A tiny face gazed up at me, the eyes wide despite their many folds. The baby was wrapped in a bloody towel, and its lips were blue.' The events of a December afternoon on which a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow will forever alter eleven-year- old Nicky Dillon's understanding of the world which she is about to enter and the adults who inhabit it: a father who has taken great pains to remove himself from society in order to put behind him an unthinkable tragedy; a young woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is superseded only by his sense of justice. Written from the point of view of thirty-year-old Nicky as she recalls the vivid images of that fateful December, hers is a tale of love and courage, of tragedy and redemption, and of the ways in which the human heart always seeks to heal itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An after-school stroll leads to a life-altering event for widower Robert Dillon and his 12-year-old daughter, Nicky, in this delicate new novel by acclaimed author Shreve (All He Ever Wanted,etc.). In the woods surrounding their secluded home in Shepherd, N.H., Robert and Nicky make a startling discovery—a baby abandoned and left to die in the snow. The infant survives, but the incident leaves its mark. Still recovering from the painful loss of her mother and infant sister two years earlier, and readjusting to the shock of a sudden move from suburban Westchester to rural Shepherd, Nicky struggles to reconcile her innocent notions of adult integrity with the bleak reality of their discovery. The tenuous sense of normalcy Robert manages to sustain is broken with the appearance of Charlotte, the baby's young mother, on his doorstep. Retold 18 years later by an adult Nicky but written in the present tense, the story shifts brilliantly between childlike visions of a simple world and the growing realization of its cruel ambiguities. Aside from a few saccharine moments and a rather pat ending, Shreve does a skilled job of portraying grief, conflict and anger while leaving room for hope, redemption and renewal. Her characters are sympathetic without being pitiable, and her prose remains deceptively simple and eloquent throughout.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Critics agree that Light on Snow is not Shreve’s best work. One called it simplistic, while another complained that the characters’ actions were not believable. Some questioned Shreve’s decision to tell the story from the point of view of an adult Nicky, whose removal from the events deprives the narrative of immediacy. Several readers did find Nicky’s story affecting, and Shreve devotees may enjoy this book as a lesser effort by a favorite author. Those seeking an introduction to her work, however, might look for a different place start—The Pilot’s Wife, perhaps.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co; First Edition edition (October 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316877336
• ISBN-13: 978-0739448175
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (145 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,579,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts (just outside Boston), the eldest of three daughters. Early literary influences include having read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton when she was a junior in high school (a short novel she still claims as one of her favorites) and everything Eugene O'Neill ever wrote while she was a senior (to which she attributes a somewhat dark streak in her own work). After graduating from Tufts University, she taught high school for a number of years in and around Boston. In the middle of her last year, she quit (something that, as a parent, she finds appalling now) to start writing. "I had this panicky sensation that it was now or never."

Joking that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejections from magazines for her short stories ("I really could have," she says), she published her early work in literary journals. One of these stories, "Past the Island, Drifting," won an O. Henry prize. Despite this accolade, she quickly learned that one couldn't make a living writing short fiction. Switching to journalism, Shreve traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived for three years, working as a journalist for an African magazine. One of her novels, The Last Time They Met, contains bits and pieces from her time in Africa.

Returning to the United States, Shreve was a writer and editor for a number of magazines in New York. Later, when she began her family, she turned to freelancing, publishing in the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine and dozens of others. In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close. Since then she has written 14 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot's Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, Body Surfing, Testimony,and A Change in Altitude.

In 1998, Shreve received the PEN/L. L. Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction. In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot's Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah's Book Club and an international bestseller. In April 2002, CBS aired the film version of The Pilot's Wife, starring Christine Lahti, and in fall 2002, The Weight of Water, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Penn, was released in movie theaters.

Still in love with the novel form, Shreve writes only in that genre. "The best analogy I can give to describe writing for me is daydreaming," she says. "A certain amount of craft is brought to bear, but the experience feels very dreamlike."

Shreve is married to a man she met when she was 13. She has two children and three stepchildren, and in the last eight years has made tuition payments to seven colleges and universities.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Moving Story Of Grief, Inner Strength And Redemption., October 12, 2004

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Light on Snow (Hardcover)

"Anita Shreve, a former high school teacher and prize-winning journalist, is best known as a novelist. "The Pilot's Wife," "All He Ever Wanted," "Fortunes Rocks," and "The Weight of Water," are some of her books which have absorbed and moved me. I have been looking forward to Ms. Shreve's latest offering, "Light On Snow," and the author does not disappoint with this extremely moving character study. Her astute insight into the gamut of human emotions is demonstrated in this simple story of grief and redemption. Here, two people, a father and his adolescent daughter, crippled by tragic loss, seek a semblance of their past lives in a bizarre event they literally stumble into, which impacts them both profoundly.

Nicky Dillon, now thirty, is the narrator. She reminisces back to the time she was twelve, living alone with her dad in an isolated house in the woods, just outside the town of Shepherd, NH. On a December day, near Christmastime, Robert Dillon's wife, Nicky's mother, and her baby sister, Clara, were killed in a car crash. Dillon chose Shepherd at random on his drive north with his remaining daughter, from their former home in Westchester, NY, because he could not drive on any longer. His goal was to remove himself as far as possible from society - to find a quiet place with no memories to bury his grief. Nicky, who was in terrible pain also, was faced with leaving the only home she had ever known, her friends and school, stability.

Two years later, on a cold, wintery afternoon in mid-December, Nicky and her father go for their usual late afternoon walk in the forest. The snowfall is heavy enough to make snowshoes necessary. Deep in the woods they find a newborn infant, abandoned in the snow, lying in a sleeping bag. She is wrapped in a bloody towel, umbilical cord still attached. If they had arrived at the scene a little later, the baby girl would have froze to death. Racing to the hospital they are in time to save the child. Both father and daughter are questioned by a very shrewd detective, and the police begin a search for the parents who could be charged with attempted murder, child abandonment and cruelty. Nicky, who has had to mourn alone for two years, desperately wants the baby to live with them. She wants to learn about the mother and what made her abandon her child. How could a woman make such a terrible choice?

There is a fascinating mystery here, but the novel's strength lies in the development of the characters. Twelve-year-old Nicky, on the cusp of young womanhood, is strong and very mature for her age. Perhaps it is the resilience of youth which gives her courage. She is the caretaker, the one who watches out for her father, a former architect who now takes solace in carpentry. Robert Dillon is narcissistic in his grief. By isolating himself, he forces isolation and loneliness on his daughter. Interspersed throughout the narrative are poignant memories of life with Nicky's mother and sister. Her mother will always remain young in Nicky's mind, while her sister grows up, just as she would if she were alive. At one point Nicky speaks of the small cast of characters with whom she frequently communicates - whose lives she remembers daily. "There are four of them in my little playlet: my mother who remains the same age she was when she died and who gives me bits of advice on how to handle my father; Clara, who is three and who is getting a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas; Charlotte, who will do my hair and shop with me for clothes and be my friend; and also the Baby Doris, who might be having a bottle now. Or a nap."

There is an air of listlessness, hopelessness, throughout much of the novel. But this adds to the credibility. The mood lightens eventually as outside events force change. Ms Shreve's descriptions of small town New England, many of the novel's secondary characters, and the gorgeous frozen winter landscapes are rich and detailed. "Light On Snow" is different from Anita Shreve's other novels in that it is primarily character driven. It is a very good book and I do recommend it.

JANA

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The aftermath of grief, October 12, 2004

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Light on Snow (Hardcover)

The tragic accidental death of Robert Dillon's wife and small daughter has irrevocably altered his life and left him literally staggering through the days in shock and disbelief. Twelve-year old Nicky wasn't home at the time of the accident, the effect on her as traumatic as anything yet experienced in her young life. Dillon's response is instinctive: he moves Nicky to rural New Hampshire, to a small house that is isolated from likely intrusion, effectively sealing off the family from the pain of the world.

Because of her youth, Nicky is quicker to recover, awakening after the long months of grief to find that her father simply cannot shake the depression that weighs upon him. He is barely functioning, turning out simple furniture that provides them with a meager income. They establish a few new routines, afternoon walks and make mostly unsuccessful attempts to engage as a family, albeit a broken one.

It is on one of their late afternoon walks through the darkening countryside buried in new snow, that they first hear whimpering. Finally locating the source of the cries, father and daughter discover a newborn baby, abandoned soon after its birth. After a harrowing ride to the hospital, the baby survives and the Dillon's return home, both in awe of what they have just accomplished. But while Robert ponders the kind of mother who could abandon her child, Nicky is harboring dreams of a changed family dynamic, one that includes the new baby. Robert disabuses Nicky of this idea, but a spark of rebellion has taken root in her soul.

When the baby's mother shows up on their doorstep, both father and daughter are uncomfortable, but before she can leave, Charlotte faints, still weakened by the recent birth. With a terrible storm descending upon their home, the Dillon's give shelter to the young woman. With a confused and desperate Charlotte under their roof, Robert and Nicky are confronted with the personal difficulty of making judgments of others. And Nicky is drawn to the slightly older Charlotte, seeking comfort in the womanly attentions she has not experienced since her mother's death.

Loss has taken a terrible toll on the Dillon family, but when Charlotte enters their lives, she brings a new awareness, challenging their complacency and willingness to bow to the grief that has so dominated their lives. In this small, deceptively simple story, Shreve addresses the important themes and critical choices that affect the three protagonists of Light on Snow. This intricate domestic drama is essentially a morality play; at the core of the novel is a simple theme of forgiveness and redemption. Luan Gaines/2004.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect winter read, October 12, 2004

By 

Annie "bookwishes4" (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Light On Snow (Large Print) (Hardcover)

Light On Snow tells the story of Nicky, a twelve year old girl, and her father Robert taking a walk in the snow one winter day only to find an abandoned baby freezing and wrapped in a bloody towel and sleeping bag. They immediately rush home to warm the baby and then take her to the hospital where she can be properly cared for. While there, the police question Robert about the incident but he is released.

Days later as a snow storm is approaching, the mother of the baby comes to their home under the false pretense of looking for furniture, which Roberts makes in his barn. She eventually admits the truth about who she is, but by then it is too late for her to leave and Robert must make the decision of whether or not to turn her in to the authorities. He does not want anything to do with her but as they are faced with time alone, she tells him her side of story and his thoughts and feelings about her begin to change.

Light On Snow is a very haunting story about the decisions we make and what consequences those decisions make on us, and others. The writing is simple to read for being such a complex story. This is the perfect book to curl up and read on a cold winters day.